you cannot give
the message.

"Everyone that hears has had his own sorrow. None of them are new ones,
they are all old, and so few that one person can suffer all. It is for
you to take that, to know the hurt heart and the rebellious soul, so
that you can comfort, lift up, and make noble with your art.

"And you--you cry out when you should be glad. Miss Iris does not love
you, and beyond that you do not see. Suppose one thousand people were
before you, and all had loved someone who did not care for them. Could
you make it easier if you knew nothing of it by yourself?

"Listen. On a hill in Italy there was once a tree. It was a seed at the
beginning, a seed you could hold with the ends of your fingers, so. It
was buried in the ground, covered up with earth like something that had
died. Do you think the seed liked that?

"But is it afraid, when its heart is swelling? No! It breaks through,
with the great hurt. Still there is earth around it, still it is buried,
but yet it aspires. One day it comes to the surface of the ground, and
once more it breaks through, with pain.

"But the sun is bright and warm, and the seed grows. Careless feet
trample upon it--there is yet one more hurt. But it straightens, waits
through the long nights for the blessed sun, and so on, until it is so
high as one bush.

"Constantly, there is growing, one aspiration upward. Bark comes and the
tree swells outward, always with pain. Someone cuts off all the lower
branches, and the tree bleeds, yet keeps on. Other branches come thick
about it; there is one struggle, but through the dense growth the tree
climbs, always upward. In the sun above the thick shade, it can laugh at
the ache and the thorns, but it does not forget.

"And so, upward, always upward, till it is lifted high above its
fellows. Birds come there to sing, to build their nests, to rear their
young, to mourn when one little bird falls out from the nest and is made
dead.

"The sun shines fiercely, and it nearly dies in the heat. The storm
comes and it is shrouded in ice--made almost to die with the cold. The
wild winds rock it and tear off the branches, making it bleed--there
must always be pain. The thunders play over its head, the lightnings
burn it, and yet its heart lives on. The rains beat upon it like one
river, and still it grows.

"The years go by and each one brings new hurt, but the tree is made hard
and strong. One day there comes a man to look at it, all the straig